Collateral
by Cricket99
Summary: After the fire that destroyed his home, Peter Hale has had his Alpha title stolen by his upstart nephew and a collection of newly turned pups. He's willing to fight tooth and nail to get it back. Lydia Martin is just collateral damage. College AU. Sort of.


A college AU for Teen Wolf. Peter wasn't killed when Derek took the Alpha title from him, and he's gone into hiding as a professor to keep an eye on his nephew. None of the pack know who he is. As in canon for the first few seasons, Lydia knows nothing about werewolves so far.

ALSO. As much as I love this pairing (the actors are beautiful and have great chemistry on and off screen) it's definitely not a healthy relationship. Peter is dark and manipulative and seriously creepy. I like to think that Lydia gets her revenge, but if you're triggered by that sort of thing just be warned.

* * *

Peter Hale does not feel guilt. He has felt guilt once in his life, when he woke in the hospital paralyzed and unrecognizable. It was dark, and cold, and it held him in its icy grip for far too long. Survivor's guilt is what his therapist called it, for making it out of the fire alive. He does not feel this towards Lydia. He has not, and will not, apologize for wanting to be powerful, the desire to survive.

But he notices the heels - and in some deep corner of his mind Peter hates himself for knowing a twenty year olds wardrobe so well - they're the expensive ones, made with stiff grey tweed that she pairs with red lipstick like a suit of armor. The click-clack sound of them on the pavement as she passes him by causes a twinge of something akin to remorse.

She really had been too young. She had thought he was just a slightly-too-young-too-smart professor, with unruly hair and an interest in his studies that matched her own in all it's intensity. He'd noticed her the first day of class, recognized the intellect she hid behind the lipstick and mean-girl looks that so fooled her friends and lacrosse captain boyfriend. Peter had seen her, deemed her interesting, and filed her away for later use.

And then he'd seen her with Scott McCall, and Lydia Martin went from being a pretty distraction to being useful. And it had been easy, all too easy, to lure her in. A tutoring session here, a cup of tea during office hours, casually bumping into each other on campus when she was alone. Peter Hale had been an Alpha once, a title he'd fought tooth and nail to earn after the fire that destroyed his family and his life. And then the title had been stolen by one Derek Hale - nephew and petty annoyance extraordinaire - with the help of his little minion Scott McCall.

The fact that Derek could turn new wolves was an irritation that made his skin crawl. And this little Lydia seemed to be surrounded by the new pups; Scott the undecided major with a lacrosse scholarship, Isaac of-many-scarves, Erica the too-blonde (also undecided), and Boyd the quiet pre-med. Even her boyfriend - Peter imagines Jackson the least useful of the bunch - had his eye on the bite. And yet none of them had thought to tell the little strawberry blonde about the supernatural world she'd stepped into.

It's actually impressive how much she manages to ignore. Perhaps it's because she's so focused on her classes, or the way she thinks she can make troublesome circumstances disappear with the sheer force of her will. It is an impressive will, and the hunter in him takes a great pleasure in the subtle manipulation it takes to bend it round his own. Maybe she realizes what's happening, as he worms his way into her mind like a parasite, maybe she just ignores it.

When he first appears at her door she doesn't appear surprised. There are two beds inside, Lydia's hung a periodic table beside her favourite shots from this month's vogue, while the other sports a marked bulls eye above it. Peter wonders what she's told the arrow-toting roommate about the handsome professor she's been spending more and more time with. Had Allison Argent questioned her when she came back early in the morning after having fallen asleep on the good professor's couch late the night before?

It's funny; the way they think they're protecting her. Peter smiles at the empty room behind her. She lets him in without a word, too far under his spells to fight or question the strange man in the hallway.

She's in satin pajamas, loose but unwrinkled, and she walks barefoot across cold floor to perch on the one desk chair, waiting for his instruction. Peter smiles. A month ago she'd have argued, cried, tried to scream and push him away. He doesn't feel any guilt for the mind he's broken into, confident he can put her back together in the end. She's collateral damage, at worst.

"Come here" he tells her, letting the child lie against him on the bed. His fingers trace her skull, scraping against her scalp ever so gently with half-exposed claws.

She whimpers when he goes inside, pulling apart her carefully formed thoughts like spider silk and infusing his own. He takes a few tidbits of memory - names, schedules, significant conversations - filing them away to be used against the new pack when the time comes. Then he weaves his own design into her mind, pushing and pulling until she knows exactly what she has to do. She gasps when he pulls away, letting her fall onto the mattress in a cold sweat.

Her hand reaches up, circling his wrist, her nails leaving five perfect half moons in the skin. She's still trying to hurt him; he feels a proud amusement at the thought. She's strong.

"You know," he tells her rather fondly, as she begins to shake "I think you're going to pull through this with a minimal amount of post traumatic stress."

Lydia comes to class one day with bags under eyes that even her expensive concealer can't hide. The Argent girl has an arm over her shoulder, and when Jackson shows up late he sits in the very back, refusing to look at them. Were Peter not laying low, he'd have kicked the boy out just to see what happens. But he can't chance Derek showing up to see who's harassing his pack, so the professor just makes a note to fail the boy when term ends.

He's so close to his goal, he can't have the girl going and becoming useless over a boy this late in the game. She appears at his office after class as usual, stopping the doorway and blinking briefly with confusion.

"Sorry" she says, lost in a rare moment of lucidity, "I'm not sure why I'm here."

He puts a hand on her shoulder and she shudders before her body calms under the touch. Peter guides the girl to a couch, listening to her heartbeat until it becomes a steady slow rhythm as she falls asleep in his arms. Victory is so close that the would-be Alpha can taste it in her scent.

It's a busy week, what with midterms coming up and a lizard-boy on the loose. Peter doesn't have much time to check on his little pawn, and he nearly looses his cover when he does. She's walking across campus with a boy, young and gangly who seems to talk even faster than Lydia herself.

It's not until Peter is standing almost in front of them that Peter smells the rich earthy scent of Derek on the boy.

"Lydia?" the boy is grabbing her arm and Peter feels a growl rising in his throat, "Who's that guy?"

She turns, looking straight at him. Her curls bounce with the motion, and her eyes are a familiar mix of confusion and exhaustion when they meet his own.

"He's just one of my professors, Stiles," She says.

The boy frowns, causing a funny wrinkle to form on his forehead. Peter wonders if he's one of the ones who knows, and decides it's probably likely, with the stench of wolf he's carrying around. Then he nearly laughs, because Stiles isn't glaring at the once-dead beta plotting to steal the Alpha status. He's staring at a professor stalking a student.

Abuse of power. Peter laughs at the thought, ignoring the confused students around him.

When it's all over and done with, Peter finds that he wears the Alpha title well. It settles over him like a second skin, an aura of raw power. Everything around him is magnified, the world pulsing with sound and colour and smells. He's played the game and won - forcing loyalty from the pack would have been easy with this sort of power, but he waits. Peter is a patient man, he can see the next moves in this game, and the inevitable checkmate he's put into motion. Derek is licking his wounds - a natural response - and once he's done they'll fight again, Peter will win, and the pack will follow their old Alpha in serving the new one.

That's all he wants, really. A pack, his home the way it was (under renovations currently, he's grown sick of living on in an apartment so far from the woods), and the power rightly his. Peter can wait a few more weeks for his nephew to make the right decision.

But it means that for now he has all sorts of time, and not a plot in sight. It's dull and he's bored - that's what he'll argue later - and that's why he calls her name.

When the time comes, Peter's plot unfolds as perfectly as expected.

Derek, while moderately clever, has chosen a pack too young and too naive to possibly comprehend the threat he brings. They don't see him until he's in their midst and it's over, too distracted by hunters and lizards and their overtly dramatic lives. When he's in charge Peter is going to have to work on their training.

He does it quickly, a combination of moonlight, mirrors, and spell work only a very few can read, let alone remember. Lydia does a good deal of the work, clever even under his ghostly influence. He can hear Derek scream as the title is wrenched from him, and his pack flees, scattered and afraid. If Lydia cries when it's over Peter doesn't hear her, too intent on enjoying the new power flowing through him.

It's the boy Stiles who figures out the connection, and who warns the pack off campus. An admirable move, the boy is smart, Peter will have to remember that. Though of course it's also futile - he hardly needs his cover as faculty anymore - but admirable nonetheless. Except for a brief glimpse of Scott near the medical buildings, Peter had yet to encounter any of the wolves since that night. Even the Argent girl is strangely absent. He wonders if she'll ally with the pack when they come to him, or if she'll show up at his door with a crossbow one day.

They all lay low except Lydia. Lydia whom he'd hunted, invaded, and twisted for his own use. She'd yet to have a single missed class recorded by the head office, and her grades resolutely refused to waver from their near-perfect standing. She had bags under her eyes the first day after it happened - that was when she wore the low wedges, her equivalent to sweatpants - but she never hid like the others. Peter wonders why he notices, why he cares in the slightest.

She flinches when she hears his voice, like someone's pulled a gun or grabbed her from behind. It's a violent, irrational reaction to a simple greeting, and she hides it in an instant. Her shoulders straighten and she walks on, passing within arms reach of his frame. Her scent - vanilla and caramel and something darker - washes over Peter. There's something new. His nose wrinkles.

Wolfsbane. A sprig of it, bright and flowering, tucked into the front pocket of her bag. To a passerby it looks like a simple flower, something a girl gets from her sweet college boyfriend and presses in her journal. But in Lydia's hands it's a message, armor like her lip-gloss and the click clack of her heels.

He admires her courage, when she appears at his door. He won't miss the office, or the irritating white noise caused by the hundreds of students clambering about campus. It's the final week of semester, and he's packing up the last of the books to go to the rebuilt library in the Hale house. The smell of dust and packing tape does little to drown out the vanilla-caramel-something-dark scent that fills the room as she materializes in the doorway.

"I remember everything." She says.

And then she shoots him.

Peter actually admires her foresight. Only Lydia Martin would wear designer gloves to cover any chance of fingerprints. She'd calculated his sense of smell as well, carrying the wolfsbane flowers around had accustomed him too it and he had barely noticed until the scent of laced bullets until one was burying itself into his flesh. She unscrews the silencer as she steps inside, closing the door quietly behind her.

The Alpha had rocked backward upon impact, stumbling into a wall. He slides down it now, dislodging several books as he makes his way to half-sprawl on the floor. The texts hit the ground with muffled thumps. The carpet is thick. It will be a while before anyone comes to find him. Lydia watches him dispassionately.

"It's only your shoulder." She says with a practiced calm "The bullet's coated with a tincture of wolfsbane, it's excruciatingly painful but it won't kill you."

Her head tilts to the side, innocently appraising as his fingers fumble about the wound.

"You might have to dig the bullet out with your claws. Invasive, isn't it?"

He growls, letting misshapen fangs form for her to see.

Her heart is racing, but her face holds it's calm.

He watches her hand on the gun, completely steady. She places it on the desk, turning her back on him in a calculated defiance. Her gloved fingers trace book spines, and she addresses him over her shoulder.

"I've been learning. I'm a good student, as you must have noticed. I don't know enough to hide a body quite yet, but at this rate I'm sure I'll get there pretty soon."

She finds the text she's looking for, a thick compilation botanical illustrations and potion instructions. It's seventeenth century, a first edition, and easily worth more than the rest of the collection combined. Lydia tucks it in her oversized bag.

On the floor Peter chuckles and coughs. He hadn't quite so much violence in this confrontation. He can already feel his body healing around the bullet, a sore throbbing spot embedded into the muscle. She's right; he's going to have to dig it out.

Lydia watches him. He realizes he hasn't said anything yet, and wonders what the girl expected. More of a fight perhaps. He can feel his wolf coming out, urging him towards the hunt. But Peter is slowly realizing that he likes Lydia Martin alive. She's perfect like this, strong and calculating just as he'd imagined when they first sat here and he crept inside her mind like a poison.

He's responsible for this creature before him, the girl who still holds a lingering shade of his touch in her psyche. He's left scars, pushed her to the edge and thrown her over when necessary. But the strength to come back, to fight and come for revenge, that's all her own. That twinge of remorse is slowly morphing into admiration.

In a smooth motion Lydia's picked up the gun again, swinging around to point it between his eyes. Peter grins at her, a trickle of blood making it's way down his chin. She glares for a second, and then turns, leaving without a word. He listens to her footsteps down the hallway and into the elevator. Even out of his sight, she's yet to cry.

She would have been perfect for the bite.

When you enter another mind, it's never just a one-way street. Bits of Lydia had crept into Peter, and they're slowly infecting him like some sort of virus. He's becoming accustomed to recognizing songs on the radio that he's never heard before, and enjoying foods completely unfamiliar and sickeningly sweet.

He can use it to his advantage of course. He knows about Lydia's cravings for strawberry crème frappes, and when she enters the starbucks he's already got one for the each of them on the table in front of him.

She sits, to his surprise, and levels with him a look across the table.

"I have a knife in my bag." She tells him "Allison's been showing me all sorts of tricks."

"You're a quick learner." He deadpans. Six months later and he's slowly getting used to waking up with an ache in his shoulder.

"Hm."

Lydia takes an experimental sip of the drink. Peter leans back, reading her. The air of exhaustion is gone, and she's yet to flinch away from him. The pack has settled under his leadership with time, working together to remodel the Hale house and training for future battles. The Argent girl is still hanging around Scott, but she glares when the Alpha comes close. Peter assumes that Stile's noticeable absence from the house is due to Lydia's influence as well.

He has plans. Rather harmless plans for once, to build the pack with human members and emissaries. An alliance with the hunters seems prudent, and connections to Deaton and the sheriff's office. Little Lydia, whatever she is - and Peter's caught some glimpses from the bit of her in his head that even he can't understand - is the first and most important step.

Peter has always been drawn to power, and this girl is brimming with it.

She can see him plotting, and he knows it.

"If you touch my mind again I will shoot you. In the spine."

He doesn't doubt her for a minute.

"Lydia the immune" he muses on his earlier thoughts, "You really would have been perfect for the bite."

To her credit, Lydia's pulse stays steady. And when he grins, she matches his humorless smirk with one of her own. They're lined with a deep red today- blood and wine, war and passion and promise. It matches the shades of her hair, and when he curls a tendril round his finger she doesn't shy away, but lifts a single eyebrow in a challenge.

It's a start.


End file.
